What is the relation between temperature rise and deforestation?
In this case study we are looking at a problem statement that, is there a relationship between deforestation and temperature increase?. Now a days we see that global temperatures are rising day by day which is a alarming situation to global survival. We also noticed that natural forests are shrinking which means less natural habitat. Let’s see is there any relationship between these two scenarios or are they don’t have an impact on each other.
Datasets
I will be using three datasets here:
- Global Forest Area dataset
- Global Temperature change dataset
- Country Codes dataset
Global Forest Dataset
This dataset contains the data of change in natural forest area from 1990 to 2020.It contains 228 rows where each row represents different country. And it has 2 columns country name and percentage of change in forest area for each country.
Global Temperature Dataset
This dataset contains the data of average global temperature change from 1990 to 2020. It contains 279 rows and 2 columns each observation represents the unique country and average change in that country’s temperature.
Country Codes Dataset
This dataset contains the country names and three character country codes.T his data is useful for plotting maps in plotly.
Change in forest area
In this world map we can see the percentage change in forest area. While the legend shows us the -2 to +2 values. Where negative value means the deforestation while the positive value shows the increase in the natural forest area. From countries Cote d’Ivoire has the highest percentage of deforestation. On the contrary Bahrain has the highest percentage of increase in natural forest area.
Global temperature change
In this chart we are visualizing the average temperature change of each country from 1990 to 2020.The legend is showing the average temperature from 0 degree centigrade to 2 degree centigrade. According to this chart Belarus has seen the highest temperature change i-e “2.66”, While the least value has been for Nauru “-0.286” in last 30 years.
Plot the top 10 countries for cross comparison
Let’s plot the top 10 countries with highest percentage of change in
natural forest area with respect to change in average temperature of
that country. In this graph we can clearly see that the Cote d’Ivoire
has the highest percentage of change in natural forest but it doesn’t
have have the highest average temperature change.We can also point the
Saint Pierre which is among the top ten countries having highest natural
forest change percentage but it has the lowest value of average
temperature change.
Conclusion
By analyzing the data of natural forest and global temperature from last 30 years, we can see that change in natural forest area has a little impact on global temperature, which points to the fact that there shall be other factors which effect the change in global temperature along with natural forests. Now based on the analysis, we can say that there is no direct relation between change in global temperature and change in natural forest area.
Next steps
For analyzing the reason behind change in global temperature, we have to consider other factors like construction and carbon emissions along with natural forest. Because it is clear from the above analysis that there is no single factor affecting the change in global temperature.